The Chesterfield Supporters Club set out in 2014 to build a Memorial Garden at the Proact Stadium. One purpose of this was to honour those former Chesterfield players who gave their lives in the service of their country. To find out more about the Memorial Garden and how you can help it come to fruition, please follow this link.

There isn't a family in this country which hasn't been shaped in some way by the loss of loved ones in war, and the family that is our football club has given up its share of players and officials to the greater good. In tribute, we list them here.

1914-18:

Lieutenant Vernon Bowmer,
of Crich, played once for the Chesterfield Town side. He served with the 16th
Battalion of the Sherwood Foresters. He survived the shooting war but was badly
wounded, and died in a military hospital at Bath on October 9th,
1919. He was awarded the Military Cross in 1917 for conspicuous gallantry in
action, having organised bombing parties that, according to his citation,
"accounted for a large number of Germans."

Fred
Bulcock was a clogger
from Stonegravels who joined the Royal Scots Fusiliers and lost his life in
action around Albert, on July 8th, 1916. He played with Chesterfield
Town’s reserve team in the 1911-12 season.

Perhaps
no great lover of authority,the bustling inside-right Billy Gerrish clashed with directors at Aston Villa
and Preston North End, and was in the last chance saloon when he joined
Chesterfield Town in 1912. His ability was far above that required in the
Midland League but he had the misfortune to break a leg on his debut, and went
on to make only 8 appearances before leaving the club (and leaving only good
memories, it seems) in the summer of 1913. He turned up as a war guest at
Reading but joined the 17th Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment, the
famous Footballers' Battalion, not long after its inception.

Gerrish helped save the life
of a another man by volunteering to give blood - a thing tremendously rare, in
those days - while in hospital himself in February 1915, and it was this sort
of spirit that led Major Frank Buckley, the regiment’s senior officer, to
describe Gerrish as “…a splendid soldier, most willing and brave.”

Billy was killed in the early
part of the Battle of the Somme, one of 51 members of the 17th
Middlesex who lost their lives on August 8th, 1916, at Guillemont.
The battalion’s “B” Company, normally 200 or so strong, had only ten fit
fighting men left under the command of a lance-corporal at the end of that day.
Billy’s legs were shattered by a nearby shell burst and he is remembered laying
quietly, smoking a cigarette, while waiting for stretcher bearers. Billy
Gerrish is remembered with 72,000 other officers and men on the Thipeval
Memorial.

Gerald Graham played for the old Town side in the
Midland League during the 1910-11 season. Little is known of this Brampton-born
moulder's football career beyond spells with the Town club and Rotherham
County, but we know that he served with the 21st West Yorkshire regiment (Wool
Service Pioneers) and was wounded three times in the space of ten days in 1917;
after recuperation at home he returned to France and took part in the Battle of
Valenciennes, losing his life on November 1st 1918, just days before the
armistice. He left four young children.

Another Brampton man, forward
Jimmy Knowles, played a few times
for the first team in 1914-15 and scored with remarkable freedom for the
reserves. He joined the 5th battalion of the Sherwood Foresters and
saw service in Ireland before being posted to France. He was wounded in the
advance to the Hindenburg Line in 1917 and died of those wounds at Boulogne on
May 1st of that year.

Lieutenant Charles
Newcombe was a former Head Boy at the Chesterfield Grammar School and a
Derbyshire cricketer, and played for
Chesterfield Town as an amateur in 1911 and 1912. His football career took him
to Glossop, Rotherham Town and Manchester United but he was learning the trade
of a mining engineer at Bolsover Colliery when he answered his nation’s call by
joining the 7th battalion of the King's Own Yorkshire Light
Infantry. Charles was killed by sniper fire two days after Christmas Day 1915,
and is buried at Fleuraix.

Chesterfield-born Arthur
Revill saw service with the Grenadier Guards before the war and was called
back to the colours in 1914, joining the second battalion. Posted to France as
part of the British Expeditionary Force, he was wounded in action during the
Battle of Loos, and died of his wounds on 29th September 1915.
Arthur is buried at Lapugnoy, in France.

Lance
Corporal Jimmy Revill
was a Sheffield United man who guested for the wartime Chesterfield Town club
and was posted to the 104th Field Company, Royal Engineers. He was
grievously wounded on the first day of the Arras offensive, at the Battle of
the Scarpe, on April 9th, 1917, and succumbed to those wounds later
that day. Jimmy is buried with 3,000 other British soldiers at Bethune.

Sergeant Major Joe Smith
was a powerful centre-half and joined up halfway through the 1914-15 season,
along with his pals in Chesterfield's half-back line. He too chose to join the
Footballers' Battalion and died at Serre, in France, on November 13th,
1916 - the last action in the Battle of the Somme. He was mentioned in
dispatches for bravery that saw fall, wounded, only to get up and continue the rush into battle before being
shot down again.

Albert Edward Tye
was a
decent wing-half with a decent Chesterfield Town side between 1904 and 1906,
who also played for Burton United and Leicester Fosse. After football Arthur
settled in Burton and followed the trade of a painter. On the outbreak of war he
joined the 4th Battalion of the North Staffordshires and was posted to
Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) in 1916. Rising to the rank of lance-corporal, Albert
was listed as "Missing, presumed dead" after the battle for the Hai
Salient, near Kut, on January 25th, 1917. Albert is remembered on the memorial
at Basra.

1939-45:

Arthur
Bacon

Given his scoring record for Third
Division (South) teams, Arthur might be described as 'one that got away'. Manager Harry Parkes was keen to sign him
from Birdholme Rovers in September 1923 after a trial in which Arthur played
under an assumed name to protect his identity, but club policy stipulated that
the manager had to get the board's approval before being allowed to get anyone’s
signature. In the time between the trial
game and the next board meeting, Derby County nipped in.

Born on Jawbones Hill, Arthur enjoyed
a wandering career that was nevertheless productive wherever he went. The
scorer of five goals in one game for Coventry and six in one match for Reading,
his career came to an abrupt end after he was struck in the face by a ball
during his time at Highfield Road, leaving him partially blinded. He had joined
Coventry from Chesterfield in 1933, after a single season with his hometown
club that produced six goals from 30 appearances.

Arthur had no less an admirer of his
play than the distinguished journalist John Arlott, who once described him as
"A tall man with a shaving brush tuft of hair growing out from a shallow
forehead above a mighty jaw. His chest was like a drum, his thighs hugely
tapering and he had two shooting feet which he threw at footballs as if with
intent to burst them."

The exact nature of his war service is
still being researched: it is thought that he served as a Special Constable,
although his death certificate gives his occupation as “Fireman at Aero Works,”
those works being the Rolls Royce plant in Derby, maker of the Merlin engines
that powered the allies to victory in the skies over Europe. We are certain
that Arthur gave his life in the service of his country, being on duty when he and
twenty-two others were killed in a single-bomber raid on the plant on July 27th,
1942, and thus merits his place among those remembered here.

Albert
Bonass

Albert Bonass emerged
from local football in his native York to make occasional appearances for
Darlington and York City, before joining Hartlepools United in 1934. A sturdy
wingman with a keen eye for cutting in and shooting for goal, Albert netted 31
goals from 77 Hartlepool starts before moving on to Chesterfield in April 1936.

Chesterfield had just
won promotion to division two but such was Albert’s impact on his new club that
Joe Miller, the side’s regular outside-left, never made the first team again,
after Albert’s debut. A steady supply of goals and good crosses from the left
helped establish The Spireites as a second division side in the run-up to World
War Two, but when Norman Bullock took over and sought to take the club to the
next level, Albert was judged surplus to requirements, being allowed to move to
Queen’s Park Rangers in the summer of 1939. By the end of his Chesterfield
career Albert had made 98 Football League appearances and scored 26 goals.

Albert joined the
Metropolitan Police as a reserve constable shortly after war broke out, and
joined the RAF as a radio operator in 1943, “guesting” with seven teams close
to wherever he happened to be based. Serving in Wellington bombers, he was
forced to bale out of an aircraft over Manchester, but his luck ran out when a
Stirling in which he was a crew member crashed on a training flight at
Tockwith, in Yorkshire, in October 1945. Albert lost his life in the crash,
along with the rest of his crew and a civilian in the village.

Fred Fisher

Barnsley-born outside-right Fred joined Chesterfield
from his home-town team in February 1938 for £500, but never quite cemented a
place in Chesterfield’s line-up. He slipped further down the pecking order
after a change of manager and was sold to Millwall at a healthy profit less than a year after joining The Spireites.
He represented England in a wartime international against Wales, in 1941. During the Second World War, Fred served as an air gunner with
the 166th Squadron of the RAF, but was killed on active service. Fred is buried with the rest of his crew at Taingy, in France.

Allan Sliman

A fine, stylish, defensive
pivot, Allan Sliman began with Arthurlie, a Scottish Division Three side,
before Bristol City brought him south in 1928. Ashton Gate became a regular
calling-point for scouts who filled notebooks with stuff about Allan. Perceived
weaknesses in his attacking game caused First division sides to hesitate
and Chesterfield were the first to make a conclusive move, despite not
having scouted him prior to signing.

Allan's performance
against them at Saltergate in February 1932 persuaded The Spireites to lay down
£1738 to secure his signature, being a £1500 transfer fee and the player's
share of benefit payments due from City. It was a bold, ambitious move by
Chesterfield, but Sliman's recruitment paid off handsomely for the club. He was
also the only player on the League's maximum wage at Saltergate for much of his
time here.

Allan's fee was the highest
paid by Chesterfield for a player at the time, but it was money well spent.
Tall, imposing and with the presence to dominate opponents without recourse to
the physical stuff, he was the foundation on which a side was built to win the
Northern Section in '35-6 and establish a place as a Second Division team.

When age began to reduce his
effectiveness he moved to Chelmsford City, an ambitious Southern League outfit,
becoming their Player/manager in October 1938, and the club enjoyed a fine FA
Cup run under his stewardship.

On the outbreak of war he
resumed his former trade of carpenter before returning to Scotland in 1943 and
joining the RAF. Promoted to Flight Sergeant, He became a flight engineer with
the 75th. (NZ) Squadron. Posted to RAF Mepal, in Cambridgeshire, Allan and his
crew arrived on April 1st, 1945, and flew their first operational mission on
the night of 14th/15th April, with Potsdam as the target. For Allan, it would
be his only mission; on the way back his aircraft was set upon by fighters and
he was mortally wounded. He passed away that night in a Cambridgeshire hospital
and is buried in Chelmsford.

Alec Campbell

Alastair Kenyon “Alec” Campbell was born in
Southampton on May 29th, 1890. His father worked for the Ordnance Survey and
mapped out a future for Alec that included attendance at the prestigious King
Edward’s School, in the city. While at school, Alec’s sporting prowess came to
the fore; he skippered the school team and played for England’s powerful Amateur
side in 1908 - the same year that they won Olympic gold in football. He remains
the only schoolboy ever to play at such a high level, as far as records show.

1908-9 saw him play
first-class cricket for Hampshire and debut for Southampton. Described as
“Tall, with telescopic legs,” Campbell soon attracted the scouts and a move to
Glossop came in 1913. After they left the League he had a short spell with West
Ham before returning to Southampton. He skippered the side from the centre-half
position as they made the transformation from Southern League to Football
League, and ended an 18-year association with The Saints in 1926, when joining
Poole Town as player/manager.

Under his management, Poole
consolidated a place in the Southern League and reached the third round of the
Cup, going out to Everton at Goodison Park to a Dixie Dean hat-trick. All this
came to the attention of Chesterfield’s directors and, when they elected to
dispense with Harry Hadley, Campbell was interviewed and appointed from April
25th 1927 at £500 per annum – the most a manager had ever been paid here.

Jimmy Cookson was sold from
under him within a fortnight or so of his starting the job but £2,500 of West
Brom’s money paid a lot of debts and allowed Campbell some change to rebuild. He
brought Ralph Williams – a prolific scorer at non-league level – from Poole and
went back to The Dell to bring Frank Matthews up, too. Manchester City provided
John Elwood and Bill Turnbull. These were all fair players and would have
embellished a decent squad but the club, in its wisdom, introduced a
“residential” clause to playing contracts and good players like Arnold Birch,
Jacky Fisher and Sam Hopkinson left, rather than move house.

The end product was a
disjointed playing staff that was also perhaps a little dispirited by the
departure of the popular Harry Parkes. The last two games of 1926-7 were both
lost, but this was written off as the new man got his feet under the table; a
home defeat to Wrexham on the opening day of 1927-8, however, set a low
standard that the club barely rose above during Campbell’s ultimately short
tenure. Barrow were beaten six-nil as the side hit 11th place but this was the
highest they reached under Campbell. The forwards were functioning well enough,
but the defence was hopeless, with a lack of tactical awareness leading to the
team conceding 27 goals in the season’s opening 14 games.

When only 2,354 were
tempted through the turnstiles by the visit of Wigan Borough in November 1927,
the alarm bells went off in the boardroom. An emergency board meeting took
place in Harold Shentall’s Glumangate office on November 23rd 1927. Six
directors, the financial secretary and the club’s solicitor, a Mr Wakeley,
crammed into the room to discuss Campbell’s fate. Mr Wakeley was instructed to go
up to Saltergate and negotiate a severance package. The speed with which
Campbell agreed to go suggests relief on his part that his ordeal had come to
an end. Mr Black, the financial secretary, was appointed caretaker manager,
pending the appointment of a successor to Campbell.

It is too easy to dismiss
Campbell’s time as a mistake, from start to finish. Many of the players he
brought in were rushed out after Campbell left, and one or two good ones were
lost in the haste to exorcise his memory from the club. Campbell saw the value
of youth and promoted Bernard Oxley, Charlie Bicknell and George Beeson
to the professional ranks, all of whom would bring in handsome fees when their
turn came to move upwards.

The brevity of Campbell’s
period of office makes the man difficult to assess. He was still just young
enough to return to playing, as an amateur with Basingstoke Town and the Green
Waves club, in Plymouth, but he never re-entered the world of senior football
management. As an educated man he might have appeared aloof to the average
player or supporter but there was no questioning his commitment to the job or
bravery in taking the task on.

His departure had
consequences that rang through the club's organisation since his arrival and
costly departure can be seen as the trigger-point for Harold Shentall, whose
family by now held the majority of shares, to begin the process of becoming
Chairman. At the end of the 1927-8 season Harry Cropper was persuaded to stand
down and Shentall took his place - one that he would occupy until his death in
April 1971.

Campbell had a keen sense
of duty and did his “bit” with the Royal Artillery in World War One, being
commissioned as a 2nd. Lieutenant. He retained this rank with the RA in the
Second World War, but lost his life in June 1943 near Portsmouth, while on
active service.

Bob Wrigglesworth

Bob’s brother
Billy came through Chesterfield’s “A” and reserve teams to make his mark, and
the same was expected of Bob when the seventeen-year-old joined the club in December
1935. The club was a better one than his brother had joined, though, and Bob
was unable to make sufficient progress to be kept on beyond the end of the
1937-8 season. Bob joined 38 Squaron, RAF, serving as an air gunner in Wellington bombers around the Mediterranean
theatre; he lost his life over Greece on January 23rd 1943 and it
buried at the Phaleron Cemetery, near Athens.